Usabilityweb

In addition to Xerox - just push the green button - and Océ, who have been paying attention to the usability of their copiers and advertising that, we can now add Sharp to the 'usable copiers' list. Or at least advertised as usable

True innovation requires the adoption of a belief system that sometimes must prevail in the face of other data metrics. Read up on the great inventions and business wins and you will note that at the core of most of them lie belief, dedication, and the passion to succeed. Today's business leaders are often too afraid to move ideas forward without ironclad data proofs that they will be successful. All too often, they are the losers. Use your head, listen to your heart, and feel what's in your gut.

Ketel benadrukt het belang om in het hele proces de gebruiker te horen: "Tijdens het proces hebben we momenten ingebouwd, waarbij we de gebruiker betrokken bij het ontwerp en om verbeteringen vroegen. Dat is zo'n 12 keer gebeurd in 2 jaar tijd." Bij de start is een propositietest uitgevoerd en zijn gebruikers op Schiphol in de businesslounge gesproken. Daarna volgde het design, het interactieve ontwerp. Elke keer werd er getest en werd alles bijgesteld.

In the near future, I believe that you'll be able to get an advanced degree in Business Design. Some programs like the d.school (a formative experience for me) and Rotman are playing with this idea, but I don't think these programs really nail it yet.

Great design is born from inspiration, obsession, commitment and diligence. You need to have your head up and observe, and sort out what the truth really is. But in the end, it is about a creative individual taking that information and translating it into something really great. And great design is more than an object: It is an idea. An idea that permeates everything

Nigerian banks must stop using attractive women to persuade customers to open accounts

1. Build web products that meet audience needs\n2. The very best websites do one thing really, really well\n3. Do not attempt to do everything yourselves\n4. Fall forward, fast\n5. Treat the entire web as a creative canvas\n6. The web is a conversation\n7. Any website is only as good as its worst page\n8. Make sure all your content can be linked to, forever\n9. Remember your granny won't ever use "Second Life"\n10. Maximise routes to content\n11. Consistent design and navigation needn't mean one-size-fits-all\n12. Accessibility is not an optional extra\n13. Let people paste your content on the walls of their virtual homes\n14. Link to discussions on the web, don't host them\n15. Personalisation should be unobtrusive, elegant and transparent

What I want to develop is a web analytics maturity model encompassing the most important factors of success, basically, the Critical Success Factors of web analytics.

One of the most important things about improving is making it a way of life, so that it happens over and over. What's keeping you from using analytics to optimize your marketing?

Although some graphic designers claim they hate UseIt, ordinary users tend to like it. We usually want sites to be usable, and we get frustrated when they're not, even if we don't really know what's wrong with them. Nielsen helps us to understand the problems, and that they're not necessarily our fault.

A few months ago, I hired Conversion Rate Experts to work on my business. I have learned loads from them. So far they have grown our conversion rate by 124%, and have given me great insights into the thought process of consumers hitting this site...reminding me why they buy, and how ineffectively we were conveying the value of all the different components of our offering. 124% is a good start, and we still have a lot of things to improve upon.

There are three things that are "rolling" about the list. First, the team adds issues to the list as they see new things come up (or that you didn't notice before, or seemed like a one-off problem). Second, the team adds participant numbers for each of the issues as the test goes along. Third, the team refines the descriptions of the issues as they learn more from each new participant.

There are three key areas to consider in design and benchmarking when undertaking such a substantial airport redevelopment project. First, we considered our passengers and how we engineered their journey through the airport. Taking into account everything from walking times to way-finding and immigration, our airport design has ensured the optimal journey.'

We surveyed the top 20 most-trafficked wired Web sites - according to Nielsen Online - and we found that half of the sites did not work well on leading mobile phones.

it was easy (sort of) to "run the studies" enough times to understand the average variation that occurrs in the groups of different sizes. Based on their simulations, Tullis & Woods concluded cardsorting studies with just 20-30 participants are robust and predictive

In this article, we'll take a detailed look at the design, layout and usability of Craigslist and point out some areas where we feel change and improvement are possible. This is only one opinion of what could be done to improve the site. Our goal is to demonstrate the process of evaluating a website in certain areas and determining specific improvements that can be made. Hopefully this will help other designers who are attempting to evaluate websites of their own or of clients.

Of course, a part from taking the pictures the analysis and annotation might have taken some time, but you'll manage doing that within one day. I think his report is a great example that even an unexperienced 'user researcher' can produce a wealth of design information in a limited amount of time, given the fact that he or she is in the right place at the right time.

n this interview made during Agile 2008, Alan Cooper, the father of Visual Basic and supporter of interaction design, talks about his contact with the Agile movement and the similarities discovered between Agile programmers and interaction designers.

Did you know that the images of faces that capture people's attention can be used to guide people around a website or an ad? I thought it was obvious! However, when I was at ad:tech Sydney 09 last week I mentioned it to people, and they were amazed! I realised it was worth posting about it!